When I studied in Freiburg, I was required to take a three week long, pre-semester German intensive class at SLI (SprachLehrInstitut) to immerse me in the language. I had to take a very official, scary online placement exam prior to leaving the US, which put me in the intermediate-advanced level, in some grand, official spectrum of language knowledge.
When I showed up to my first German class, I had no idea what to expect. There were about 20 of us, and I was with a couple of other American students in an IES program, an American exchange student, a British girl, a Scottish girl, a girl from Bolivia, a guy from Brazil, a handful of Japanese girls, a French guy, a Swiss (French-speaking) girl. A lot of people knew English but some didn't, and that's where things got really interesting. German was our only universal common language, so we had to do the best we could. The teacher, Uta, was a really kind, nurturing, kindergarten-teacher type, who was always very patient and understanding. We had a textbook, but Uta asked us all to weigh in on what we wanted to learn and what we needed the most help with (grammar, speaking, etc.) so we got to direct the class. The biggest assignment was a Referat on a topic of our choice, a 10-15 minute oral presentation with a question and answer period after.
In my German courses at home in the US, it's easy to use your native language as a crutch and just say the English word when you can't think of the German one and the other person will instantly understand what you're trying to say. But when you're working on an assignment with a French guy who does not speak English and you don't know the German word and are struggling to describe it using other German words...then what happens? You reach this weird sort of impasse and it's one of the most awkward experiences I've ever had. Giving up mid-conversation is a really strange experience. Sometimes you both laugh and acknowledge how difficult it is to converse in each other's second language. It makes you feel closer to the other person, and also farther apart. You realize you are structurally limited from being able to understand this person completely. There are charades and smiles and descriptive attempts, but at some point you realize you may just never be able to properly explain something to them, or them to you. It's a really humbling and humanizing experience, and one I took with me all throughout my travels.
You realize what you take for granted. I was having a conversation with the Brazilian guy about what we did in our spare time, and was amazed that we both read Game of Thrones but also amazed that he had no idea about a lot of classical British literature...I was struggling to explain Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to him. And then I thought, well, duh, these books aren't in his native language and don't play any role in his culture really, so why should he know about them?
The Referats were one of the most interesting and informative projects I've ever done. Uta suggested that we each do a Referat on an interesting topic on our own countries or experiences, so we could better understand each other. I learned some incredible stuff. I learned about the food in different regions of France, about how to play rugby, someone's experience working for a suicide hotline, someone's experience living in Russia for a year and traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the higher education system in Bolivia, the education system of Germany versus Japan...and I myself presented on CSA programs and the local food movement in the US. The SLI class was my first time really learning about the educational systems in other countries, and because we had such a wide range of countries (and continents: 4!) represented, we talked about it a lot. I was absolutely floored at how different the US is to everywhere else, and how it costs astronomically higher here than anywhere else that I've learned about. In some places, it doesn't even cost anything.
Education became one of my favorite topics to talk to people about throughout my five months of travel. My Spanish friend complained that 800 Euro a year was too expensive, the Japanese people complained that $10,000 was expensive, the Germans protested when their university costs jumped from 400 to 500 Euros, and my Danish friend told me that Denmark pays him to go to college. Nobody believed me when I told them my university (before financial aid) costs $50,000 a year. WHAT?
Talking to people from different other countries has been the single most educational experience of my life. Through my conversations with people, either in their native countries or places were we were both foreigners, I learned so much more about life and the world than I have in my more than 17 years in a classroom. I learned about some amazing differences in government and educational systems, culture and food traditions, parts of histories that were definitely absent from my textbooks, and most importantly, how despite all of that, we are so remarkably similar in our thoughts and hopes and fears.
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| Klasse 7 at the closing reception for our class. Free champagne and pretzels! |
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